CALLER: I have a question. I’m hoping you can explain something for me. I don’t understand how Harry Reid is able to lie almost every time he gets up there and makes a statement, not just about Romney, not just about a budget, but it’s constant, and it drives me crazy.

RUSH: Well, the overall answer to this is the same answer to why the Democrats get away with everything they get away it — and you’re talking about getting away with it with a certain group of people, what we call the low-information voters. Most people in this country — well, not most. A majority of people never hear that Harry Reid told a lie.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: What Harry Reid says is never characterized as a lie or as being wrong or as an untruth in the media. It’s just never said. You’re right: Every day he is filled with outrageous insults and untruths, but he’s never called on it. No Democrat ever is. They are allowed to lie. Harry Reid’s purpose is to defeat Republicans, and whatever he has to do in that quest is permitted by the Democrat Party and by the media.

He’s under no scrutiny whatsoever. The Republicans could call press conferences every day and accuse him of it, offer the quotes, demand an explanation, and the news would be that the Republicans are a bunch of spoiled kids who can’t take it. “You’ve gotta grow up. Politics is tough. Get used to it.” It’s like anything else: Until a majority of the people are made aware and understand, this stuff is gonna continue to happen. So your challenge is to not let it frustrate you to the point of ruining your day.

I have been there, and I’ve let that stuff happen. I mean, I’ve gone home from work just literally livid over what these people get away with. For 25 years, I thought, “How in the world can we change this?” I know exactly how you feel. People lying — arrogantly, condescendingly, blatantly — is one of the most irritating things in terms of a person’s character, characteristics or personality traits that irritates me.

All you can do is contradict it to people and tell ’em that he’s not telling the truth. But there’s another factor, too. When Harry Reid says, for example, that Mitt Romney didn’t pay his taxes, what’s Romney to do? When Romney challenges him on it, then that’s just opening the door. The media’s gonna demand proof. We’re in a situation where whatever allegation a Democrat makes is taken as truth. The accusation then becomes the responsibility of whoever he’s accusing to prove that he’s wrong.

You’ll note that Harry Reid never had to provide evidence of that charge that Romney wasn’t paying his taxes, or hadn’t paid them. Nobody ever demanded Harry Reid prove it. Not in the media, anyway. He got away with saying, “Well, I know somebody who told me.” What that became was, the media going to Romney and demanding that Romney prove that Reid was wrong! So here’s Romney forced with proving a negative. It’s a phony, false assumption.

The worst thing you can do is behave in such a way as to allow that to be accepted. So what Romney had to do was basically ignore it, but then there was pressure from the Republicans. A bunch of Republicans in the media, in Washington, got nervous and were urging Romney, “Go ahead, release your tax returns! Just do it and get this out of the way,” just like the same Republicans said, “Go ahead and sign the fiscal cliff and we’ll deal with Obama on the debt limit.

“Let’s just get taxes off the table.”

We keep giving things away. They wanted Romney to release his taxes to get rid of the issue. It didn’t get rid of the issue! It wouldn’t get rid of the issue! All the Democrats wanted was page after page after page of Romney’s tax returns so that they could have a data-mining operation, so they could find anything in there that would look suspicious to low-information voters, and Romney did the right thing in denying it to them. That was the purpose of the allegation.

It’s a stacked deck, and we’re holding the short end, for now.

But it won’t be forever.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You want to hear Harry Reid’s latest lie? I mean, they happen every day. I don’t even talk about them anymore. Harry Reid was on This Week this past Sunday, and the subject was the sequester. Now, he didn’t say this was gonna be cut by the sequester. This number that he used was independent of the sequester. He said, “The American people need to understand it’s not as if we’ve done nothing for the debt; $2.6 trillion already we’ve made in cuts, and all those cuts have come from non-defense programs.”

He didn’t have the guts to say that on the floor of the Senate, but he said that on This Week, and he was not challenged by anyone. There are nowhere near $2.6 trillion in cuts! Folks, there have not been any cuts in anything — defense, non-defense, discretionary spending — zilch, zero, nada! He went on to repeat that lie to George Stephanopoulos. He said, “I repeat: $2.6 trillion already, all coming from non-defense. If we’re gonna have a sequester, defense is going to have to do their share.”

We have not cut $2.6 trillion! If we had cut $2.6 tillion, Barack Obama would not have been reelected. That’s just an out-and-out lie, folks. It’s not even close to anything in reality. Now, what would you do? Not one reporter challenged him. If he’s not gonna get challenged on this stuff, it’s gonna survive and live on in the ether out there. He does it every day. It’s pathological. I don’t know how you compromise with such a pathological liar. I don’t know how you talk with one.